(Reuters) – A Russian missile hit residences in Balakliia in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region on Saturday, injuring 13 people including eight children, prosecutors said.
Pictures posted online showed homes in the town southeast of Kharkiv reduced to rubble.
Reuters could not independently verify accounts from either side. Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians. Thousands have been killed and injured since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The city of Kharkiv and the surrounding region has been a focal point of Russian attacks in recent weeks.
Russian forces last month pushed their way across the border into northern districts of Kharkiv region and officials say they have seized about a dozen villages.
A military spokesperson, Nazar Voloshin, told national television on Saturday that Ukrainian forces controlled 70% of Vovchansk, a town five km (three miles) inside the border which Russian troops have been trying to capture.
Prosecutors also announced that recovery operations had concluded at the site of three missile strikes early on Friday in the city of Kharkiv, with a death toll of nine, most in a badly damaged apartment building.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Maria Starkova; Editing by Chris Reese)
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